the fight of our lives

Paul Krugman's op-ed "When the Fire Comes" piece asks, "What will you do when terrorists attack, or U.S. friction with some foreign power turns into a military confrontation?:"

I don't mean in your personal life, where you should keep calm and carry on. I mean politically. Think about it carefully: The fate of the republic may depend on your answer.

'The Bush administration," he points out, "exploited the post-9/11 rush of patriotism to take America into an unrelated war, then used the initial illusion of success in that war to ram through huge tax cuts for the wealthy:"

Bad as that was, however, the consequences if Donald Trump finds himself similarly empowered will be incomparably worse. [...]

Every day brings further evidence that this is a man who completely conflates the national interest with his personal self-interest, and who has surrounded himself with people who see it the same way. And each day also brings further evidence of his lack of respect for democratic values.

What Trump has done in attacking the very Judges and Courts that have (thus far) placed restraints upon his arbitrary abuse of power is to tie those restraints directly to the potential for further acts of terrorism against the country. He is telling us, in a very cold, cynical way, that he will consider himself blameless if we are attacked, with the unmistakable implication that such an attack would justify abandoning any constraints or limitations on his own powers.

Here's the tl;dr version: "We need to be ready. What is coming will literally be the fight of our lives."